POWER May 2022 Intl - 6

Dramatic Innovation-Driven Ramp
Up of Floating Offshore Wind
Anticipated by 2030
A drumbeat of floating offshore wind-
related developments this year suggests
the pipeline for the long-nascent
wind technology sub-sector may be finally
beginning to grow. While floating
wind's current contribution of total wind
installations is only 0.1%, recent developments
suggest floating offshore wind
is slated to expand to 16.5 GW by 2030,
accounting for 6.1% of global wind installations,
said the Global Wind Energy
Council (GWEC).
The representative forum for the entire
wind energy sector at an international
level in a March report said that floating
offshore wind has officially cleared the
demonstration and trial phase in its roadmap
to commercialization and is now definitively
in its " pre-commercial " phase.
" In the past decade MW-scale floating
technologies have been tested through
demonstration and pilot projects in both
Europe and Asia, " it noted.
Following installation of the first
megawatt-scale offshore wind turbine in
Norway in 2009, industry " firsts " have
included the 2017 connection of Equinor/Masdar's
30-MW Hywind Scotland
wind farm, which deployed five Siemens
Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE)
6-MW turbines, in the UK-the world's
first floating offshore wind project. In
2. The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) projects Europe will account for up to 68.2% of total
floating offshore wind installations added in 2021 through 2025, followed by Asia and North
America. However, the global market share of Asian countries is likely to more than double in
the second half of this decade. Courtesy: GWEC
1. The 50-MW Kincardine Offshore Windfarm,
one of the world's largest floating wind
farms to date, became fully operational in
October 2021. Located 15 kilometers off the
coast of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in water
depths ranging from 60 meters to 80 meters,
the project consists of five 9.5-MW Vestas
V164 turbines and one 2-MW V80 turbine,
each installed on WindFloat semi-submersible
platforms designed by Principle Power. Cobra
Wind, a subsidiary of Cobra Group, was responsible
for the delivery of the project, including
engineering, construction, installation,
and commissioning. Courtesy: Cobra Wind
6
May 2020, the 25-MW WindFloat project
became fully operational off the coast of
Viana de Castelo, Portugal. In October
2021, the largest current floating offshore
wind project, the 50-MW Kincardine
project in Scotland, which uses a
Principal Power Windfloat platform and
five Vestas V164-9.5 MW turbines, went
online (Figure 1). And in December 2021,
China grid-connected the 5.5-MW Sanxia
Yinling Hao, the world's first " typhoonresistant "
floating offshore wind turbine.
Focus is now quickly moving to " larger
first of a generation schemes, " GWEC
said. " However, by 2026 we expect annual
installations to surpass 1 GW per year, a
milestone that fixed offshore wind reached
in 2010. From this point forward, floating
offshore wind will be in its commercial
phase. " Starting in 2026, installation rates
will continue to increase and project size
will grow, bolstered by developments in
South Korea, Japan, Norway, France, and
the UK, the organization said (Figure 2).
GWEC suggested growth for the subsector
is bolstered by several factors. The
most prominent is the opportunity to harvest
untapped potential in a world seeking
to rapidly decarbonize. About 80%
of the world's offshore wind resource
potential lies in waters deeper than 60
meters (m), it noted. " As well as providing
even better wind resources and larger
technical potential than bottom-fixed offshore
wind, floating wind could help create
socio-economic benefits such as jobs
and most importantly engage the oil and
gas industry to complete a smooth energy
transition, for example, bringing their
expertise in foundation construction and
unparalleled skills in delivering huge engiwww.powermag.com
neering
projects into offshore wind while
re-skilling workers who may be dislocated
from the fossil fuel sectors, " it said.
Investment and interest from some of
the world's largest energy players has also
revitalized technology advancement. While
the floating offshore industry has so far
mostly relied on semi-submersible floating
structures-such as are deployed at
the Kincardine project-oil and gas experience
could refine other " floaters, " including
deep-water floating spar, tension-leg
platforms, and barge types (Figure 3).
" It is worth to mention that no universal
solution is available for floating
wind. Different geographical situations
will favor different solutions, and factors
such as political need, opportunity
for localization, local infrastructure, and
different turbine design will also come
to play in floating foundation selection, "
GWEC said. " As the total installations
for floating wind is relatively lower than
fixed-bottom wind, operations and maintenance
(O&M) solutions to maintain the
floating turbines are still being developed
at present and it may favor some types
of designs considering the [operational
expenditure] control. "
GWEC added that as the market
evolves, the industry anticipates innovation
in construction and O&M, particularly
to perform activities in port or in
sheltered waters that could make use
of different types of vessels. " Continued
innovation is expected in the market,
with new technologies and products expected
to support better mooring and anchor
solutions, longer-term maintenance
regimes, deep water substations, and
dynamic cabling, " GWEC said.
POWER | May 2022
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POWER May 2022 Intl

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